VfB Stuttgart: 2018/2019 Hinrunde Discussion

I'm just hoping they last the year! We haven't had the same manager for a full season since 2012/13. That's 11 managers in five years!

Make a plan and give it enough time to work.

 

I missed this clock update. A relegation reminder for years to come?? Nur der HSV. LOL

 

Jesus Christ! Just keep your manager - even a bad one - for the full year! I guess Wolf doesn't seem so bad to them now. When you fire the manager you need to blame the manager AND the guy who hired him. So, is that 12 in 6 years then? I don't want to look it up anymore.

 

We look destined for relegation again this year. Is anyone shocked that firing the manager did not solve our problems? Augsburg just beat the leaders Dortmund to make it a 5 point gap with the relegation places. This next match with Hannover is huge, if we hope to keep the relegation playoff place we are currently in.

We have the league's worst goal differential, led by the most goals allowed at 51. We're only second worst at goals scored with 19, ahead of bottom table Nürnberg by 1. Gomez is scoring once every 5 games and there's nobody to fall back on with Ginzcek gone. Looks like we'll play 5 at the back, but Baumgartl has a concussion, so who knows if we'll keep Hannover out. Weinzierl will rely again on January signing, 18-year-old Kabak at CB. They beat us 3-1 at their place. Losing again could be the costliest of the season.

Reschke was fired, and Hitzelsperger has been in place as the new director of sport for a couple of weeks. That cleared the way to fire yet another manager, but it looks like they decided it's too late to turn things around that way. For once I'd agree that we've played worse than our talent, especially defensively. Too much to do in the offseason, but can't worry about that now. Time to fight for our Bundesliga survival. A win would make that a probability with 10 matches to follow.

 

The "Der Wolle Dietrich muss gehen" sign in die Kurve was matched by a "Kind muss weg" sign in the visitor section, showing how much both fans don't want to be in this situation again. Nevertheless, only one of us will escape the drop, if that. Then the match started...

We completely destroyed them! 5-1 was more than we deserved. We got 3 in the first half, and when they pulled one back in the second, we scored on a deflected shot shortly after. Hannover looks well behind us now. Our best hope is to catch Augsburg by the end of the season, we still play them once, but it will require some consistency aside from that.

I don't know how the club structure works, but it does seem that the Dietrich experiment has failed. Our commercial development can't be improving if we look likely to get relegated at any time. He claims he made no mistake in hiring Reschke, it just didn't work out. The next one better work out, or his denials won't matter. VfB is not a cellar dwelling team.

Player-wise, it looks like we'll need a replacement for Gomez sooner than we thought. A replacement AM, now that Gentner is a bench player, would be good. And a replacement for Pavard, since he's sold to Bayern at the end of the year. Doesn't matter for now. We'll just need some results in the next 10 matches, by any means necessary. Stay tuned.

 

We gave a good accounting of ourselves against the league leaders. Although they added an extra time goal to make it look less close. Of course they dominated possession, but we got a goal back when we had to. That first goal was a penalty committed by Castro. He looked like the weak link in midfield before this happened, but we also got unlucky. He handled the ball first, which wasn't called, then he stomped Rues's foot, but it was given outside the area. Turns out that our defense forced him back, but his planted foot could clearly be seen inside the area on VAR. I guess they can't call the hand ball, since the ref missed it entirely.

If they play that hard the rest of the way, we shouldn't fall to the bottom two places, which is first order of business. Next week's match vs Hoffenheim is important, because Augsburg play Hannover, and one of them will likely get the win. Augsburg is virtually out of reach at the moment with their draw moving them three points above us with goal differential 18 better. So we'll be in 16th place next week regardless, but it might be just one point behind Augsburg and Schalke with a glimmer of hope.

 

We sure look headed for the playoff, but playing the third place BL.2 team would probably be in our favor. Too close to a coin flip for my liking, but HSV finished 16th two years in a row and survived both times. The main thing is to learn your lesson if you do escape. They did not.

 

Well, VfB 1 - 1 Hoffenheim, and we were lucky to get it. We came out with pressure, so I thought it was going to be that way, but they started creating dangerous chances and probably should have scored about three of them. Of our remaining opponents, four are above Hoffenheim and four are below. It's probably more down to how the other teams play, since we'll be lucky to go .500 the rest of the way.

Augsburg won for a 5 point gap, so nothing to get excited about until we make up ground. Schalke is actually closer, but 3 points and just out of reach. We play them on the last day of the season. It would be crazy if they wound up in 16th. I've always envied their commercial revenue. Seemed like they always had it together. Suddenly they don't. Of course, they're just visiting, and we've been living down here for a while. The future might just be more of the same.

 

Well, I might have suspected that is was more likely to turn into a clusterf*ck than for the club to turn things around. Reschke was fired and Sven Mislintat was hired as Sporting Director. This is actually a good name hire, but so was Reschke. Whoever decided to underinvest in the squad and hire Weinzierl is the main problem. In fact, whoever could never find a manager to survive two seasons in the row should go? They've don't nothing but hurt the VfB brand for the last five years. Dietrich has to be on borrowed time at this point.

On the field, it has gone from bad to worse. The 6-pointer against Augsburg could not have gone worse. They lost 6-0, losing any hope of escaping the relegation playoff and threatening automatic relegation if Nürnberg catch us - now with the better goal differential. It was a disgusting display, and for once I agree with the manager firing, since it can't get worse than the squad quitting on the field.

I did not expect to get a point the rest of the way, trusting to luck that Nürnberg wouldn't either, but somehow we managed a 1-0 win against Gladbach. One more of those would do it. However, the squad is who they are, and Ascacibar made it worse by getting banned for 5 matches for spitting. The idiot will be missing through the first match of relegation playoff - if we make it. If we then survive, we can't continue with Gomez, Gentner, and Badstuber, regardless of who eventually decides to defy the odds and become our next manager.

 

My favorite quote from the Mislintat entrance:
"Nachdem der aktuelle VfB-Kader den Eindruck eines irreparablen Totalschadens macht". and then, "Die aktuelle Mannschaft hat keine Zukunft."

Of course that's easier said than done. You might want to say that nobody currently playing has a future with VfB, but at least for the beginning, you need to keep some who can contribute until the team you want to build from the ground up is put in place. So, who's worth keeping?
Zieler, Baumgartl, Kabak, Gonzales. Maybe: Kempf and Sosa. That leaves us well short of requirements.

Who has value that we need to sell? The self-suspended guys: Maffeo and Ascacibar - which leaves us a long way to go to make a full squad. That's why we have guys who shouldn't be out there losing us matches: Castro, Esswein, Beck...

I'm actually looking forward to the rebuild, but I can only hope it will be in the Bundesliga. I won't mind a 14th place team, so long as there's adequate foundation that can be built upon. They'll need to spend this summer to achieve even that modest goal.

 

I thought about Donis, but he's still unproven. He's also not too valuable, so we might as well keep him. As for Gonzales, sure he's given very little, but he's got the tools. Also, if we jettison him, that means we have to find two strikers in the off-season. I'd give him another chance alongside someone decent.

 

Big game tomorrow. I'm talking about Nürnberg's of course, not ours. If they draw or lose, we won't be automatically relegated. Sunday's Paderborn - HSV is huge for Hamburg. HSV are 0-2-5 in the last 7 league matches, and are threatening to remain in BL2. We could well end up facing them in the playoff, which I wouldn't like. We have not had good luck in the past. If we are going to choke, I'd rather lose to Paderborn or Union Berlin. It should become a little clearer on Sunday.

 

Whadayaknow, we put 3 goals past them. I wish we had found one more win along the way. If there were 2 points between us instead of 5, we'd be playing Schalke with a chance to stay up. (or if Dortmund hadn't choked their match with them)

Anyway, HSV has decided to remain in BL2 for another year . Our most likely opponent is Union Berlin, which is just as well, since Paderborn is on a roll. Now we need to wait until May 27th to see if we're still erstkalssig.

May 23th 11:30am PST, 2:30pm EST, Home
May 27th 11:30am PST, 2:30pm EST, Away

EDIT: Fixed the dates. Memorial day is the return leg, so we should be free to watch it.

 

Union Berlin it is. Paderborn lost, but they backed into automatic promotion when Berlin could only tie.

HSV finished 2 points out of automatic promotion, and it took a complete meltdown to manage that. After being in 1st place until February, they finished 0-3-5 until falling out of contention, including losing to both bottom of table teams. I've defended Wolf after we didn't give him a full year in the BL, but maybe there's something to him being unable to keep a team from quitting. His termination was announced prior to their last match, where they finally got a meaningless win. They will have to cut salaries next year - a cautionary tale for us, if we manage to survive the playoff.

 

I will predict that they manage to survive. The Berlin defense has been excellent, but they have been facing BL2 opposition. We seemed to have recovered some form. As you say, if it doesn't translate into goals, it will be a nervous final leg in an der alten försterei. I predict a 3-2 aggregate win.

How do you think it will go?